Lethal attitudes are alive on Turtle Island

Page 9

The attitude and mind set of the present-day Euro-Canadians toward the Marshall decision only re-enforces the much older colonizer mind-set that brought genocide to many Indian people. The belief that "white is right" or somehow superior was presented more than 500 years ago to our ancestors by the Euro-Canadians, and things haven't changed much since then. It is a mind-set the Europeans derived from their "good book," the Bible. It was the excuse used by white, civilized, so-called Christians, to go out into the world and conquer, control, change and destroy those others who were different. For the colored peoples of the world this ideology was deadly. It brought with it genocide, racism and oppression.

If it were possible, one could hear firsthand of this destructive relationship by talking to a Beothuk, a Saco or a Norridgewalk. But because these entire groups of people have been annihilated, there is none left to tell about it.

As for racism, it is evident by the fact that whole groups of people were annihilated by another race simply because the white race considered these Indian people to be savages. Power, control and oppression go hand in hand with racism and genocide - a powerful destructive hand that operates as a lethal fist smashing anything that is different.

And what better way to exert power and control and enforce oppression over an entire race of people than to do so through some kind of official legislation that is carried out through administrative bureaucracy and enforced through a government agency? That is what we have with the Indian and white relationship for the last 150 years. The Indian Act and the Department of Indian Affairs, the Indian reservation system and the RCMP are power and control systems created to oppress and eventually annihilate a specific group of people. That was the guarantee given by the author of the first Indian Act, Duncan Scott. He told parliamentarians that if they would only enact the necessary legislation that the Indian problem could be cured. Within 20 years all traces of Indians would be eliminated from Canada. It was to be the final solution to the Indian problem in Canada. Otherwise, there would be Indians making all kinds of demands until eventually they demanded to be treated like human beings who have rights and who wanted their land back.

In 1940, when I was a very small child, I experienced the poison of the racist mind-set firsthand. It was a traumatic experience for a boy of three or four to watch as my dad was taken away from our small family to jail because he tried to keep his family warm. It was cold and we needed wood for heat so my dad went out to the woods to cut wood for his family. But he did it without asking permission from the Indian agent because the Indian agent was away on vacation. Since it was winter, my father could not wait to ask for permission. He knew he had to take care of his family and that wouldn't wait for the return of the Indian agent. My dad did what had to be done.

When the Indian agent returned from vacation, he was immediately informed about my dad's wood cutting. My father was immediately summoned to the Indian agent's office where he confirmed that he had, in fact, cut the wood for his family. The Indian agent tried him and found him guilty of an offence and imposed a sentence of five days in jail to teach him a lesson. Then he jailed him.

In those days, the white Indian agent was god on the reserve. He was accountable to absolutely nobody, and certainly not in any way to the Indian people. The irony of this particular situation is that the wood cut by my father at that time was located on Indian reserve land, and there was no such legislation to charge my father with this offense. It was simply the white Indian agent's way of asserting his power, control and authority over my father and our people. My dad had to be made an example of to ensure no other Indians would get similar ideas of doing anything without the aent's permission.

This kind of evil, racist, ethnocentric thinking that conceived such systems of control and power as the Indian Act and the reservation system, are still with us today. The arrogant, nobility-based European attitudes of "white is right" and "might is right" that were brought to these shores 500 years ago have not changed one iota in all these years. These ideologies may have cleaned up and disguised themselves, but underneath it is the same genocidal attitude that existed in the beginning, the same attitude that annihilated the Beothuk. It is the same attitude the Indian agent had when my dad tried to take care of his family. This is the same attitude of the Maritime Fisherman's Union and various bodies of government in respect to the Marshall decision.

As long as this kind of mind-set exists the potential for the annihilation of other Indian tribes exists. All Indian people of Turtle Island should be very concerned with the recent naked display of this "white is right - might is right" and manifest destiny lethal ideology. When Indian people are seen by Europeans as not playing the European games or playing by their rules, the naked hostility, hate, arrogance and aggression will surface. When that happens, there is a danger that another one of our Indian tribes, like the Beothuk, will be wiped out forever.